QUOTE OF THE DAY: "According to Schneider, the level of abuse endured by each member of the Gasser family was extraordinary, surpassing even that typically associated with the heavily criticized CPS. “In Jessica’s case,” he said, “the ruse devised to hide their own abuse and neglect of this child became cruelty that wasn’t merely dishonest, it inverted reality—at least until they got caught. Our investigation as to how this happened, how many other children prior to these revelations have been injured or had their parents unfairly and bankrupted by this industry, and how to protect children and families like this in the future will continue. We must prosecute actual child abuse, but we are concerned that the Munchausen 'epidemic' will lead to more baseless prosecutions and unscrupulous investigations that shatter even more Texas families and injure innocent children."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "As Ms. Gasser and her husband’s personal freedom and family were put at risk by CPS, it was apparent a cottage industry warning of a so-called epidemic of Munchausen child abuse had been steadily cultivated in Tarrant County for years. Enabled by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, several physicians and high-level state child welfare bureaucrats, the county’s purported expert in child abuse warned of hidden Munchausen cases everywhere, Schneider said. The so-called epidemic has generated consulting jobs, book deals, and podcast appearances—essentially monetizing allegations like those made against Ms. Gasser. “As we discovered later,” Schneider said, “their candid emails and texts show that these individuals boasted that they could become famous on a news program like 60 Minutes for ‘saving’ Jessica’s child, then evolved months later into angry and frightened acknowledgments that their actions had been uncovered.” As the CPS and criminal cases against Ms. Gasser moved forward, Schneider (her lawyer) said, his legal team learned and then showed in court that CPS, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, along with several physicians, colluded in a secret campaign against Ms. Gasser. Evidence showed that this group knew well that Gasser’s daughter had been accurately, independently and repeatedly diagnosed with gastroparesis and hypoglycemia by medical professionals months before authorities dishonestly accused Gasser—often under oath—of falsely claiming her daughter suffered from those same debilitating ailments."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Ms. Gasser’s legal team then discovered texts and emails sent between CPS, the Tarrant Count purported Munchausen expert, and at least one doctor showing that the group clearly thought they could cover up their behavior with gaslighting news releases. “CPS deliberately made false claims about the child’s health to the court, oversaw her severe psychological decline, then sought congratulatory publicity in what became a botched attempt to cover their tracks,” Schneider said. Schneider continued to supply Tarrant County prosecutors with volumes of detailed medical records which the court had forced CPS in Rusk County to produce—despite the agency’s attempts to conceal them. This evidence established Gasser's claims of innocence and confirmed E.G.'s various medical diagnoses. Independent medical experts, comprehensive forensic psychological evaluations, and the withheld CPS evidence refuted the allegations against Ms. Gasser and validated her statements about her daughter’s delicate medical condition. Then, in 2024, a Rusk County court ordered CPS to produce more evidence withheld from Gasser’s legal team that revealed the nefarious communications between DFPS and the so-called law en- forcement expert at the heart of the Gasser case. Following a court ruling that found CPS acted in bad faith and violated a Rusk County court order to release withheld discovery documents, CPS was forced to pay all of Gasser's attorney fees related their cover-up attempt."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: (1): Imagine how you would feel upon reading this: Fox 4 News: Reporter Steven Dial and Fox 4 staff: July 17, 2023 "Tarrant Co. mom arrested after 'unnecessary medical procedures' performed on 3-year-old, investigators say":
TARRANT COUNTY, Texas - Tarrant County investigators are asking people to come forward who may have been in contact with a woman who they say abused her 3-year-old child. 27-year-old Jessica Gasser was arrested in Rusk County last week and is currently being held at the Tarrant County Jail. Tarrant County investigators believe Gasser had multiple "unnecessary medical procedures" performed on her child after taking her to a dozen medical facilities in 9 cities across Texas, Louisiana and Ohio. "This is an injury to a child case, and the injury was committed through the act of medical child abuse, which is intentionally exaggerating and falsifying or inducing medical symptoms in your child," said Detective Michael Weber with the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office. The investigation started in February when doctors became suspicious. Court documents say that Gasser intentionally provided a false medical history to medical providers leading them to draw blood 28 times from the victim. In one instance on March 3, the 3-year-old was given a feeding tube because Gasser allegedly said she was not eating and was losing weight. Doctors became suspicious after the victim still did not gain weight, even though reports filed by Gasser said the 3-year-old was taking enough calories to gain weight. Doctors reported Gasser to DFPS because they feared the suspect was not feeding her child the way she claimed she was. Gasser also had a large social media presence, where she documented her child's health. Her TikTok account had more than 24,000 followers. Investigators say Gasser used the screen name MedicalMamaJess. "I'm asking the public to send any social media message, text messages, emails they have from the suspect about the health of her children, because they will be helpful to the investigation to have in her own words. What she is saying is wrong with her children," said Weber. of The affidavit says Gasser had set up a GoFundMe account in an attempt to raise money to take her daughter to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for treatment. At one point, court documents say Gasser and her daughter flew from Dallas to Cleveland through a company called Miracle Flight, which offers free flights to medically-complicated children. Gasser had listed gastroparesis, a disorder that slows or stops the movement of food from the stomach to the intestines, as her daughter's diagnosis on paperwork with Miracle Flight. At that time, doctors at Children's Medical Center Dallas and Dell Children's Medical Center has told Gasser that her daughter did not have gastroparesis, according to documents. A search of Gasser's phone throughout June showed she allegedly searched for possible legal consequences for her actions. On July 11, investigators say Gasser searched "Is lying to a doctor about a child illegal" and the next day Gasser allegedly searched "countries that take families on asylum from CPS." By the end of the week Gasser searched "Tarrant County child abuse cases." "These offenders, through a pattern of deception, demonstrate time and time again that they know what they're doing and they know it's wrong when they're doing it," said Det. Weber. Detective Weber tells FOX 4 that Tarrant County has seen 10 of these types of cases since 2019. Tarrant County investigators are asking for anyone with information about Gasser or who have been in contact with her through social media, email or text to contact detectives at 817-884-3749.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/jessica-gasser-child-abuse-accusations#
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PUBLISHERS NOTE: (2): 'Now imagine how you would feel upon reading this one! July 17, 2023: CBS New Texas: Reporter Annie Gimbel: Under the heading: 'Do you know Jessica Gasser? Investigators seek social media links to mom accused of Munchausen by Proxy': (Annie Gimbel is an Emmy-nominated digital journalist for CBS News Texas. She was previously a reporter for NBC 5, which launched a digital channel, both on-air and online exclusively using reports she produced, wrote, shot and edited. Her stories have been featured nationally on: CBS News, CBS Moneywatch, CNN, Drudge Report, Entertainment Tonight, ET News, and TMZ to name a few. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime, aerospace & defense, and more.)
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/jessica-gasser-investigators-seek-social-media-links-mom-munchausen-by-proxy/
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: (3): "Having been convinced by the police and the media that Jessica Gasser is and evil, unloving mother who terrorized a 3-year-old for her own sick purposes - someone who should be locked up forever, it's time to read the release issued today by Connell, Schneider, Shireman, under the heading: "Mother Jessica Gasser Exonerated After Abuse Allegations Debunked: Grand jury: No medical neglect or Munchausen syndrome abuse of toddler seized from family; Innocence confirmed in cases that generated worldwide news coverage: HENDERSON, Texas, July 22, 2025;
THE RELEASE: "Finally exonerated, Jessica Gasser, a Rusk County, Texas mother who faced false felony child medical abuse charges for nearly two years after her then-two-year-old toddler, E.G., was seized by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (CPS), has begun to rebuild her life and heal her family, her attorney Mike Schneider said today.
Ms. Gasser, who defeated baseless “injury to a child” and “medical child abuse” charges in Tarrant and Rusk Counties— and a frivolous state Child Protective Services (CPS) custody lawsuit seeking termination of her parental rights that was eventually dismissed by CPS itself—was the subject of worldwide news coverage and social media mockery at the time of her arrest in 2023.
The state agency accused Ms. Gasser of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness and a form of child abuse in which a caretaker of a child, most often a mother, makes up symptoms or causes sickness in a child in an effort to seek attention.
International news outlets, including theBBC, New York Post, Newsweek, and People magazine, covered the removal of the child from her parents by CPS, reported that allegations that E.G. was not safe in her parents' custody.
Texas Munchausen Industry Is Born
As Ms. Gasser and her husband’s personal freedom and family were put at risk by CPS, it was apparent a cottage industry warning of a so-called epidemic of Munchausen child abuse had been steadily cultivated in Tarrant County for years.
Enabled by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, several physicians and high-level state child welfare bureaucrats, the county’s purported expert in child abuse warned of hidden Munchausen cases everywhere, Schneider said.
The so-called epidemic has generated consulting jobs, book deals, and podcast appearances—essentially monetizing allegations like those made against Ms. Gasser.
“As we discovered later,” Schneider said, “their candid emails and texts show that these individuals boasted that they could become famous on a news program like 60 Minutes for ‘saving’ Jessica’s child, then evolved months later into angry and frightened acknowledgments that their actions had been uncovered.”
As the CPS and criminal cases against Ms. Gasser moved forward, Schneider said, his legal team learned and then showed in court that CPS, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, along with several physicians, colluded in a secret campaign against Ms. Gasser.
Evidence showed that this group knew well that Gasser’s daughter had been accurately, independently and repeatedly diagnosed with gastroparesis and hypoglycemia by medical professionals months before authorities dishonestly accused Gasser—often under oath—of falsely claiming her daughter suffered from those same debilitating ailments.
An Innocent Family Suffers
Meanwhile, as the cases against Ms. Gasser dragged on, her frightened child’s health deteriorated.
After she was illegally abducted by CPS, the child’s steady weight gain her parents and physicians at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic was nurturing suddenly reversed, and she endured unprecedented weight loss, violent seizures, and nearly died as she was isolated for weeks from all family in a pediatric hospital in Fort Worth, Schneider said.
Concealed from public knowledge by CPS and law enforcement was the reality that the child had lost a dangerous amount of weight immediately after she was seized from her parents.
She plummeted from the 24th to the 2nd percentile in weight while deprived of her parents’ care in her first two months in CPS custody.
Throughout 2024 and 2025, Schneider shared with prosecutors exonerating documents that CPS never disclosed to the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office which Ms. Gasser had been fighting to uncover in the Rusk County court since 2023.
A five-month, 2022 CPS investigation into identical accusations against Ms. Gasser included independent medical evaluations to assess her daughter's reported intestinal issues.
After consulting medical professionals suggested by the child’s pediatrician—and in light of CPS’s own nurse’s opinion that there was no abuse—CPS officially recognized the gastroparesis and hypoglycemia diagnoses established by numerous physicians, ruled out Munchausen allegations, and closed its investigation in Gasser’s favor in November 2022.
Yet the harassment of the Gasser family went on, Schneider said.
Independent Expertise
The world-renowned pediatric gastrointestinal experts at Cleveland Clinic evaluated E.G. in person during the CPS investigation and confirmed through its lab work and those of other medical facilities that Ms. Gasser’s representations were truthful and she and her husband had been helping their daughter gain weight.
These revelations would not only help establish Gasser’s innocence, they also confirmed CPS and law enforcement knew all along that E.G. actually suffered from those illnesses—and they knew this for nearly a year before they deployed the misleading news releases, intentionally disparaging E.G.’s mother.
“It’s clear now,” Schneider said, “this was to divert attention from the extreme mental and physiological harm that CPS, the self-described law enforcement expert, and at least two doctors had needlessly inflicted upon the child.”
Withheld Evidence, Court Sanctions
Ms. Gasser’s legal team then discovered texts and emails sent between CPS, the Tarrant Count purported Munchausen expert, and at least one doctor showing that the group clearly thought they could cover up their behavior with gaslighting news releases.
“CPS deliberately made false claims about the child’s health to the court, oversaw her severe psychological decline, then sought congratulatory publicity in what became a botched attempt to cover their tracks,” Schneider said.
Schneider continued to supply Tarrant County prosecutors with volumes of detailed medical records which the court had forced CPS in Rusk County to produce—despite the agency’s attempts to conceal them.
This evidence established Gasser's claims of innocence and confirmed E.G.'s various medical diagnoses. Independent medical experts, comprehensive forensic psychological evaluations, and the withheld CPS evidence refuted the allegations against Ms. Gasser and validated her statements about her daughter’s delicate medical condition.
Then, in 2024, a Rusk County court ordered CPS to produce more evidence withheld from Gasser’s legal team that revealed the nefarious communications between DFPS and the so-called law en- forcement expert at the heart of the Gasser case.
Following a court ruling that found CPS acted in bad faith and violated a Rusk County court order to release withheld discovery documents, CPS was forced to pay all of Gasser's attorney fees related their cover-up attempt.
Altered Medical Records
When finally turned over to Jessica’s legal team, the evidence CPS was forced to produce revealed the child’s actual medical history— and that versions of Cook Children’s Hospital’s records cir- culated by CPS had been altered to remove previous findings made by Cook confirming E.G.’s gastrointestinal illnesses.
The document production also included admissions of outrageous behavior made by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office and CPS policy makers at the highest levels of its Austin bureaucracy.
The real medical records Gasser unearthed were clear: Contrary to the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office and Cook Children's Hospital narrative about Ms. Gasser misrepresenting her daughter’s medical history and having Munchausen syndrome by proxy, state records show that Texas and Ohio doctors correctly diagnosed E.G. with gastroparesis and hypoglycemia beginning in 2021— and that this fact was confirmed by CPS and known by Texas law enforcement in 2022, a year before Ms. Gasser’s arrest and the seizure of her child.
“Wholly False and Without Merit”
Under Texas law, each child the subject of CPS custody lawsuits is required to have an attorney ad litem appointed, who is independent from CPS and parents, to represent only the child’s best interests in court.
In the Rusk County CPS case, attorney Haven Charlo, who specializes in child welfare law, was appointed to represent E.G. in June 2023, and in that capacity reviewed thousands of pages of medical and other pertinent records and interviewed physicians, caregivers, and other medical professionals, advocating solely for her client E.G.’s best interests.
In February 2025, Charlo executed a sworn affidavit provided to the Tarrant County District At- torney’s Office urging that Gasser’s bond conditions be lifted, stating, “My duties as an ad litem or [E.G.] have led me to the conclusion that all allegations of abuse or neglect against Jessica Gasser and her husband are wholly false and without merit.”
Charlo said, “CPS was dismissed by the Rusk County Court in April 2024, at the recommendation of CPS itself, Ellie's guardian ad litem, CASA, and me because there was no evidence whatsoever that Jessica or her husband Austin had ever harmed [their child].”
“[T]here was, however,” Charlo added, “ample evidence produced in response to discovery in the CPS Case that [E.G.]’s medical records from [Cook Children's Hospital] have been repeatedly altered by someone to make it appear that [E.G.] did not have medical conditions Cook itself had diagnosed my client (E.G.) with on many occasions, including gastroparesis and ketotic hypoglycemia.”
The Final Dismissals
On June 3, 2025, the last of the felony allegations against Ms. Gasser were no-billed by a Tarrant County Grand Jury and dismissed by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office for insufficient evidence.
This followed the Rusk County District Attorney’s request in February 2024 that the felony criminal charges against Ms. Gasser be dismissed.
Schneider said, “The prosecution of Jessica Gasser was built on one fabrication after another, and it all spun out of control once the court forced CPS to give us not only the damning hospital records, but internal CPS memos and texts, and emails between CPS, law enforcement and Cook Children’s Child Abuse Pediatrician (“CAP”) team.
“Ironically, the damage inflicted upon this innocent child’s physical and emotional well-being which was spun to the press in their favor by CPS bosses in Austin, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, and the participating physicians is, in itself, medical child abuse. Let’s not mince words: this is state-sponsored Munchausen by proxy.”
The Gasser Family’s Path Forward
According to Schneider, the level of abuse endured by each member of the Gasser family was extraordinary, surpassing even that typically associated with the heavily criticized CPS. “In Jessica’s case,” he said, “the ruse devised to hide their own abuse and neglect of this child became cruelty that wasn’t merely dishonest, it inverted reality—at least until they got caught. Our investigation as to how this happened, how many other children prior to these revelations have been injured or had their parents unfairly and bankrupted by this industry, and how to protect children and families like this in the future will continue.
We must prosecute actual child abuse, but we are concerned that the Munchausen 'epidemic' will lead to more baseless prosecutions and unscrupulous investigations that shatter even more Texas families and injure innocent children.
Looking ahead, Jessica Gasser said, “Our family needlessly suffered more than 1,100 days of false allegations and deliberate humiliation.
We are grateful to finally be reunited and away from the harassment and allegations they knew were false before they ever leaked them to the public.
What we do now to get our reputation back is beyond us. It’s been a terrible time, but we’re moving forward.
We also know this: Our daughter, and countless other children like her who have been targeted by CPS because of their complex special needs, still struggles to get the care she deserves because there is no legal path to correct the trail of misleading medical and child welfare records that still haunt her. So far, the people who purposefully did this to us have not been held account- able.
We pray that will change.” Connolly Schneider Shireman LLP;
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The entire release can be read at:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/p3?projector=1
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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